John Poulson | Architectuul About Change this John Garlick Llewellyn Poulson (April 14, 1910 – January 31, 1993) was a British architect and businessman who caused a major political scandal when his use of bribery was disclosed in 1972. The highest-ranking figure to be forced out was Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling. Poulson served a jail sentence, but continued to protest his innocence, claiming that he was "a man more sinned against than sinning". Family and early life Poulson came from a strict Methodist family and inherited a strong faith which stressed the importance of self-help. He did badly at school and at Leeds College of Art but nevertheless was articled to a Pontefract firm of architects, Garside and Pennington. He left to start his own Architecture practice with financial backing from his father. He never became a formally qualified architect, because as he later claimed "I was too busy to complete my examinations". Poulson soon began to cultivate contacts in the local borough council and officials at the larger West Riding county authority.

Work soon began to arrive and Poulson told friends that he was "on his way". Poulson also became politically involved with the National Liberals, although never let political differences stop him from making friends who were in charge of commissioning public buildings. Post-war business Poulson obtained a medical exemption from wartime service in 1939. The same year he married Cynthis Sykes whose sister Lorna was married to Lord King of Wartnaby. He was thus well placed to expand his business throughout the wartime years. World War II He was a workaholic and demanded the same commitment from his staff, dismissing staff who would not work his way. He had his own firm build him a house called 'Manasseh' at a cost of £60,000, helped by building contractors donating services for free in the hope of getting contracts in the future. The house won the 'Ideal Homes' House of the Year competition in 1958. When Poulson's problems caught up with him in later life, he sold the house to a young couple for just over half the build cost. Poulson revolutionised the accepted architectural method of completing a design then handing it over for costing, planning and building.

He developed a combined architecture and design practice, an all-in-one service which employed all the separate disciplines in integrated teams. This approach facilitated the development process and reduced costs. In the post war years Poulson's business boomed and by the sixties was one of the largest in Europe at the time. He was later to admit that the practice expanded "beyond my wildest dreams" and offices were opened in London, Middlesbrough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Edinburgh, Beirut and Lagos. Local authorities In 1958 the National Liberal MP Sir Herbert Butcher advised his friend Poulson to set up a servicing company to win business for his architect's practice. Poulson established Ropergate Services Ltd., named after the street in Pontefract where he was based. This company also had the advantage of reducing Poulson's tax liability considerably. The late 1950s saw a building boom as Britain had finally shaken off post-war austerity and many local authorities embarked on major building schemes. Notable among them was Newcastle upon Tyne where dynamic leader T. Dan Smith wanted to set his mark on the city.

Smith's desire to redevelop Newcastle attracted the attention of the construction firm Bovis which had worked for Poulson. Bovis' managing director suggested formalising links and in February 1962 Smith was appointed as a consultant to the Poulson organisation. This connection was extremely valuable to Poulson as Smith had a network of contacts among other authorities in the north-east, many of which were also recruited as Poulson consultants. Smith's involvement with the Labour Party reassured many Labour councillors wary of dealing with someone involved in the Conservative-allied National Liberals. Poulson also found a useful contact in Andrew Cunningham, a senior figure in both the General and Municipal Workers Union and the Labour Party in north east England. Some of Poulson's largest residential blocks were built in Cunningham's home town of Felling, County Durham. Cunningham would later go to jail for his dealings with the architect. Nationalised industries Poulson was also in a good position to win work for the nationalised industries, partly due to his having offered gifts to many civil servants when they were relatively junior and calling upon them for a return of gratitude years in the future.

As an example Poulson had met Graham Tunbridge, a railway employee, during the war. After the nationalisation of British Rail Tunbridge became estates surveyor for its Eastern Region and sent Poulson several contracts for modernisation of station-master's homes. When Tunbridge became Estates and Rating Surveyor for BR Southern Region, Poulson moved on to contracts at Waterloo station, Cannon Street station and East Croydon station. In return, Poulson had at first supplied Tunbridge with £25 weekly, and later loaned him a Rover car. Another productive contact was Scottish Office civil servant George Pottinger, who in the late 1950s was put in charge of a £3 million redevelopment of Aviemore as a winter sports complex. Poulson gave Pottinger gifts worth over £30,000 over six years, and was appointed by Pottinger as architect in charge of the Aviemore project. Pottinger also had a degree of political knowledge and skill which Poulson lacked and drafted political speeches for the "architect". Poulson's connections with the National Liberals began to give him political advancement in the early 1960s.

He was Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Liberal Council from 1961 and frequently hosted National Liberal events in London at which he met senior government ministers, where Pottinger's speeches were impressive. He also made contact with the Labour MP Albert Roberts, for whom Poulson designed a house (free of charge). Roberts had useful contacts with the Portuguese government and was offered a consultancy by Poulson at £2,500 per annum. Overseas work Poulson was increasingly interested in obtaining commissions outside Britain in the mid-1960s. This required making more contacts. The Conservative MP John Cordle had extensive contacts in West Africa and after helping on several small contracts, in 1965 became a consultant to Poulson at £1,000 per annum. However, Cordle's approaches to governments in Nigeria, The Gambia and Libya proved unfruitful. Cordle unwisely wrote a letter outlining everything he had done for Poulson, which was ultimately to doom his Parliamentary career. Maudling Another contact was the then Shadow Commonwealth Secretary Reginald Maudling, whom Poulson knew from his National Liberal activities.

Maudling was anxious to build up a business career to keep up his income and Poulson needed a big name as Chairman of one of his companies, Construction Promotion. In 1966 Maudling accepted an offer to be Chairman for £5,000 per annum. In addition, Maudling's son Martin, who had left Oxford University without taking a degree, went to work for another Poulson company. Poulson agreed to donate large sums of money to a charity patronised by Maudling's wife. In return, Maudling helped to bring pressure on the government of Malta to award a £1.5 million contract for the new Victoria Hospital on Gozo to Poulson. In Parliament, Maudling vociferously opposed the plans of the Labour government to reduce the amount of defence spending and number of UK troops on Malta. He traded on the goodwill this created to bring extra pressure, and also changed Conservative Party policy so that overseas development assistance to Malta would be 75% grant and 25% loan instead of the even split which the Labour government had introduced.

Financial trouble Poulson's business model was initially highly successful and, at its apogee, was making an annual turnover of £1 million; he himself admitted to being a millionaire. However, it was consuming more contract work than was becoming available, and Poulson resorted to tackling these difficulties by bribing and corrupting local councillors, local authority officials and civil servants at all levels. This was an expensive strategy and Poulson later estimated that he "gave away" about £500,000 in the last few years of his involvement in the business. As part of his attempts to get noticed, Poulson had become a local Commissioner of Taxes. However his own tax payments were seriously in deficit by the mid-1960s, mainly due to his extravagance on consultancies and gifts. In January 1968 the Inland Revenue finally decided to sue Poulson; on 18 November 1968 they obtained judgment in their favour for £211,639. Poulson struggled on, but in June 1969 his staff confronted him with the fact that he was approaching bankruptcy.

He attempted to recoup cash he had poured into subsidiary companies, which alerted his consultants that all was not well. Maudling and his son quietly resigned in November 1969. On 31 December 1969 Poulson was formally removed from control of J.G.L. Poulson and Associates. On 9 November 1971 he filed his own bankruptcy petition revealing debts of £247,000. The bankruptcy hearings in Spring 1972 were assisted by Poulson's meticulous record-keeping which detailed his payments and gifts. Poulson's generosity drew the comment from Muir Hunter QC during the bankruptcy proceedings that "in fact, Mr Poulson, you were distributing largesse like Henry VIII". The bankruptcy hearing also revealed Poulson's love for a lavish lifestyle and his penchant for rubbing shoulders with senior figures in the establishment. This desire to show his financial superiority over others only served to highlight his true character as a lonely, friendless and insecure person. Interestingly, one of Poulson's biggest creditors was the Inland Revenue to which he owed around £200,000.

Whilst the Revenue were pressing Poulson for payment of this amount, he was himself presiding over debt hearings in Wakefield in his role as a Commissioner of Inland Revenue. It swiftly became apparent that Poulson was at the centre of a massive corruption scandal, and in July 1972, the Metropolitan Police began an investigation for fraud. This precipitated the resignation of Reginald Maudling, then Home Secretary and notionally in charge of the police. Obituary: John Poulson | The Independent Obituary: John Poulson Thursday 4 February 1993 00:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online John Garlick Llewellyn Poulson, architect, born Knottingley Yorkshire 14 April 1910, married Cynthia Sykes (two daughters), died 31 January 1993. THE LIFE of John Poulson is best understood in terms of his influence, both on the lives and careers of the many people he encountered, many of whom came to ruin and disgrace because of him, and on the course of British politics after his downfall.

Much of the change in popular perception of the Labour Party during the Wilson era was due to the growing corruption of safe, large, spending Labour councils, particularly in the north-east of England; this benefited the other major parties because it was from 1970 that many traditional but disillusioned Labour electors changed their votes. John Poulson was born in 1910 in Knottingley, a small village in the Yorkshire West Riding where his father owned a pottery and some slum property, and was affluent enough to send both his sons to a public school. The Methodist doctrine of self-help and individualism was engrained in Poulson early, the accompanying moral tenets of probity never took. He did badly at school and at Leeds College of Art but nevertheless was articled to a Pontefract firm of architects, Garside and Pennington. He did not last long there, being inept at drawing, but his father, in spite of opposing his chosen profession, backed him to start his own practice. Colonel Hustler, his previous employer, said at the time: 'Have you heard that Poulson's starting on his own?

Christ, he couldn't design a brick shithouse.' Poulson took full advantage of the Thirties depression, paying poorly and working hard himself to make others do the same. A workaholic, he demanded total application from his employees and sacked them when they would not work his way. In 1939 Poulson obtained exemption from military service, which enabled him to extend his practice during the war and he was well-placed for the post-war boom. He also by then knew many politicians of all parties. He married Cynthia Sykes in 1939 and his wife's desire for social position and wealth was a further incentive to success. Her sister Lorna was married to John King (later Lord King of Wartnaby), who made a success as Managing Director and Chairman of Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Co. By 1949 Poulson was well established and using his political contacts to obtain large-scale civic work. He noted that many councillors had substantial financial power but were themselves living on small incomes and he used bribes as his main weapon, being often surprised how much work he could obtain with small inducements accompanied by lavish hospitality.

In the Sixties he built a series of public hospitals and grandiose new town centres with public money - including the Arndale Centre, in Leeds. By 1965 the practice was one of the largest in Europe with a turnover of more than pounds 1m and a net profit of pounds 96,000; in 1966 it was pounds 1.16m, with a net profit of pounds 112,500. In June 1972, pressed for unpaid tax by the Inland Revenue, Poulson made his first appearance at Wakefield County Court, in Yorkshire, to be examined as a bankrupt. At first his debts were estimated at pounds 250,000, but four years later the figure had risen to some pounds 1m. Reginald Maudling, the Conservative MP, who had formerly been chairman of two of Poulson's companies, resigned as Home Secretary. Poulson was prosecuted for conspiracy the following year.

It was the largest case of public corruption brought in Britain this century, but it was played down politically because both major parties were involved and the public had only seen the tip of the iceberg: a fraction of the 27,000 files on the case has been made public and, as the Salmon Committee on Standards in Public Life put it: 'We doubt if Mr Poulson would ever have been prosecuted but for his bankruptcy and his habit of meticulously preserving copies of everything he wrote or that was written to him.' Poulson's first conviction, for which he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in February 1974, related to the development of a winter sports centre at Aviemore; during the case he gave evidence for 10 days. A senior civil servant, George Pottinger, seconded to work on the Aviemore project when Under-Secretary at the Scottish Home Department, was convicted of corruption with the same sentence in the same trial, after receiving gifts of money and a car from Poulson. The following month Poulson received a further sentence of seven years, to run concurrently, on further charges of conspiracy, and a close associate of Poulson's, T.

Dan Smith, the former Labour leader of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council and a public-relations consultant to the Labour Party, was imprisoned for six years on charges of corruption. When Edward Milne, a totally honest politician, became Independent Labour MP for Blyth, in Northumberland, he found himself courted by the Poulson organisation and frozen out when he refused to collaborate. His one-man campaign against the corruption he unearthed led to his expulsion from the party. In the House of Commons, three former business associates of Poulson's were strongly criticised in a report by an all-party Select Committee on Members' Conduct in July 1977. Maudling and Albert Roberts, Labour MP for Normanton, were deemed to have acted inconsistently with the standards of the House. John Cordle, Conservative MP for Bournemouth, was deemed to have abused his membership of Parliament. He later resigned.

A book on the subject, Nothing to Declare, by Martin Tompkinson and Michael Gillard, suggests that the bankruptcy proceedings instituted in 1972 were much hindered by unusual pressure put on Muir Hunter QC and the rest of the legal team representing the trustee in bankruptcy, and all involved in the case found themselves both lamed and discriminated against in their careers. The Poulson case was the bankruptcy of the century until the death of Robert Maxwell, but it was more far-reaching. Not only did many towns lose their old civic centres with all their historic period charm for needless and often ugly facelifts purely for the benefit of Poulson and to better the lifestyles of MPs, councillors and civil servants, but the Labour Party, associated until then with idealism and welfare, largely became seen on the grass-roots level as the party of free-spending, public waste and corruption. Poulson was released from prison in 1977, and lived quietly and in seclusion thereafter. A bluff Yorkshireman on the surface, his talent was salesmanship.

He was persuasive, a good judge of character, who believed every man has his price and he could usually assess what it was, but his boundless ambition was certain to go aground on the too obvious greed of others. John Cobb, the QC who prosecuted him, summed it up: 'John Poulson was an ambitious, ruthless and friendless man whose object in life was to get as much money and work as he could by bribery and corruption.' (Photograph omitted) John Poulson John Poulson 31 January 1993 (aged 82) Leeds , West Yorkshire, England, UK Occupation Spouse(s) Cynthia Sykes (m. 1939 – ); 2 daughters John Garlick Llewellyn Poulson (14 April 1910 – 31 January 1993) was a British architectural designer and businessman who caused a major political scandal when his use of bribery was disclosed in 1972. The highest-ranking figure to be forced out was Conservative Home Secretary Reginald Maudling . Poulson served a prison sentence, but continued to protest his innocence, claiming that he was “a man more sinned against than sinning”.

[1] Contents 11 Sources Family and early life Poulson came from a strict Methodist family and inherited a strong faith which stressed the importance of self-help. He did badly at school and at Leeds College of Art but nevertheless was articled to a Pontefract firm of architects, Garside and Pennington. He left to start his own architecture practice with financial backing from his father. He never became a formally qualified architect, later claiming “I was too busy to complete my examinations”. Poulson soon began to cultivate contacts in the local borough council and officials at the larger West Riding county authority. Work soon began to arrive and Poulson told friends that he was “on his way”. Poulson also became politically involved with the National Liberals , although he never let political differences stop him from making friends who were in charge of commissioning public buildings. He was a Freemason . [2] [3] Post-war business Manasseh, Poulson’s former residence Poulson obtained a medical exemption from wartime service in 1939. The same year he married Cynthia Sykes whose sister Lorna was married to John King, Baron King of Wartnaby .

He was thus well placed to expand his business throughout the wartime years. He was a workaholic and demanded the same commitment from his staff, dismissing staff who would not work his way. He had his own firm build him a house called ‘Manasseh’ at a cost of £60,000, helped by building contractors donating services for free in the hope of getting contracts in the future. The house won the ‘Ideal Homes’ House of the Year competition in 1958. When Poulson’s problems caught up with him in later life, he sold the house to a young couple for just over half the build cost. Poulson revolutionised the accepted architectural method of completing a design then handing it over for costing, planning and building. He developed a combined architecture and design practice, an all-in-one service which employed all the separate disciplines in integrated teams. This approach facilitated the development process and reduced costs. In the post-war years Poulson’s business boomed and by the sixties was one of the largest in Europe at the time.

He was later to admit that the practice expanded “beyond my wildest dreams” and offices were opened in London, Middlesbrough , Newcastle upon Tyne , Edinburgh , Beirut and Lagos , Nigeria . Local authorities Poulson’s Leeds International Swimming Pool , opened in 1966 In 1958 the National Liberal MP Sir Herbert Butcher advised his friend Poulson to set up a servicing company to win business for his architect’s practice. Poulson established Ropergate Services Ltd., named after the street in Pontefract where he was based. This company also had the advantage of reducing Poulson’s tax liability considerably. The late 1950s saw a building boom as Britain had finally shaken off post-war austerity and many local authorities embarked on major building schemes. In Newcastle upon Tyne council leader T. Dan Smith wanted to set his mark on the city. Smith’s desire to redevelop Newcastle attracted the attention of the construction firm Bovis which had worked for Poulson. Bovis’ managing director suggested formalising links and in February 1962 Smith was appointed as a consultant to the Poulson organisation.

This connection was extremely valuable to Poulson as Smith had a network of contacts among other authorities in the north-east, many of which were also recruited as Poulson consultants. Smith’s involvement with the Labour Party reassured many Labour councillors wary of dealing with someone involved in the Conservative -allied National Liberals. Poulson also found a useful contact in Andrew Cunningham , a senior figure in both the General and Municipal Workers Union and the Labour Party in North East England . Some of Poulson’s largest residential blocks were built in Cunningham’s home town of Felling , County Durham . Cunningham would later go to prison for his dealings with the architect. Nationalised industries Cannon Street railway station, a Poulson building City House (originally British Railways House) over Leeds City railway station was a Poulson building design built in 1962. Poulson was also in a good position to win work for the nationalised industries, partly due to his having offered gifts to many civil servants when they were relatively junior and calling upon them for a return of gratitude years in the future. As an example Poulson had met Graham Tunbridge, a railway employee, during the war.

After the nationalisation of British Rail Tunbridge became estates surveyor for its Eastern Region and sent Poulson several contracts for modernisation of stationmasters’ homes. When Tunbridge became Estates and Rating Surveyor for BR Southern Region, Poulson moved on to contracts at Waterloo railway station , Cannon Street station and East Croydon station . In return, Poulson had at first supplied Tunbridge with £25 weekly, and later loaned him a Rover car. Another productive contact was Scottish Office civil servant George Pottinger , who in the late 1950s was put in charge of a £3 million redevelopment of Aviemore as a winter sports complex. Poulson gave Pottinger gifts worth over £30,000 over six years, and was appointed by Pottinger as architect in charge of the Aviemore project. Pottinger also had a degree of political knowledge and skill which Poulson lacked and drafted political speeches for the “architect”. Poulson’s connections with the National Liberals began to give him political advancement in the early 1960s.

He was Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Liberal Council from 1961 and frequently hosted National Liberal events in London at which he met senior government ministers, where Pottinger’s speeches were impressive. He also made contact with the Labour MP Albert Roberts , for whom Poulson designed a house (free of charge). Roberts had useful contacts with the Portuguese government and was offered a consultancy by Poulson at £2,500 per annum. Overseas work Poulson was increasingly interested in obtaining commissions outside Britain in the mid-1960s. This required making more contacts. The Conservative MP John Cordle had extensive contacts in West Africa and after helping on several small contracts, in 1965 became a consultant to Poulson at £1,000 per annum. However, Cordle’s approaches to governments in Nigeria , the Gambia and Libya proved unfruitful. Cordle unwisely wrote a letter outlining everything he had done for Poulson, which was ultimately to doom his Parliamentary career. Maudling Another contact was the then Shadow Commonwealth Secretary Reginald Maudling , whom Poulson knew from his National Liberal activities.

Maudling was anxious to build up a business career to keep up his income and Poulson needed a big name as chairman of one of his companies, Construction Promotion. In 1966 Maudling accepted an offer to be chairman for £5,000 per annum. In addition, Maudling’s son Martin, who had left Oxford University without taking a degree, went to work for another Poulson company. Poulson agreed to donate large sums of money to a charity patronised by Maudling’s wife. In return, Maudling helped to bring pressure on the government of Malta to award a £1.5 million contract for the new Victoria Hospital on Gozo to Poulson. In Parliament, Maudling vociferously opposed the plans of the Labour government to reduce the amount of defence spending and number of UK troops in Malta. He traded on the goodwill this created to bring extra pressure, and also changed Conservative Party policy so that overseas development assistance to Malta would be 75% grant and 25% loan, instead of the even split which the Labour government had introduced.

Financial trouble Poulson’s business model was initially highly successful and, at its apogee, was making an annual turnover of £1 million; he himself admitted to being a millionaire. However, it was consuming more contract work than was becoming available, and Poulson resorted to tackling these difficulties by bribing and corrupting local councillors, local authority officials and civil servants at all levels. This was an expensive strategy and Poulson later estimated that he “gave away” about £500,000 in the last few years of his involvement in the business. As part of his attempts to get noticed, Poulson had become a local Commissioner of Taxes. However his own tax payments were seriously in deficit by the mid-1960s, mainly due to his extravagance on consultancies and gifts. In January 1968 the Inland Revenue finally decided to sue Poulson; on 18 November 1968 they obtained judgment in their favour for £211,639. Poulson struggled on, but in June 1969 his staff confronted him with the fact that he was approaching bankruptcy.

He attempted to recoup cash he had poured into subsidiary companies, which alerted his consultants that all was not well. Maudling and his son quietly resigned in November 1969. On 31 December 1969 Poulson was formally removed from control of J.G.L. Poulson and Associates. On 9 November 1971 he filed his own bankruptcy petition, revealing debts of £247,000. The bankruptcy hearings in spring 1972 were assisted by Poulson’s meticulous record-keeping which detailed his payments and gifts. Poulson’s generosity drew the comment from Muir Hunter QC during the bankruptcy proceedings that “[i]n fact, Mr Poulson, you were distributing largesse like Henry VIII “. The bankruptcy hearing also revealed Poulson’s love for a lavish lifestyle and his penchant for rubbing shoulders with senior figures in the establishment. This desire to show his financial superiority over others only served to highlight his true character as a lonely, friendless and insecure person. Interestingly, one of Poulson’s biggest creditors was the Inland Revenue to which he owed around £200,000.

Whilst the Revenue were pressing Poulson for payment of this amount, he was himself presiding over debt hearings in Wakefield in his role as a Commissioner of Inland Revenue. It swiftly became apparent that Poulson was at the centre of a massive corruption scandal, and in July 1972, the Metropolitan Police began an investigation for fraud. This precipitated the resignation of Reginald Maudling, then Home Secretary and notionally in charge of the police. Dénouement On 22 June 1973 Poulson was arrested and charged with corruption in connection with the award of building contracts. Following a 52-day trial at Leeds Crown Court which was widely reported in the press, he was convicted on 11 February 1974 of fraud and gaoled for five years (later increased to seven years). Sentencing him, the judge called Poulson an “incalculably evil man”. For his part, Poulson denied the charges, saying “I have been a fool, surrounded by a pack of leeches. I took on the world on its own terms, and no one can deny I once had it in my fist”. Many of his contacts, in particular T.

Dan Smith and George Pottinger, were similarly convicted and gaoled, though not the three MPs: it was found that there was a legal loophole through which members of parliament could not be considered as in charge of public funds. The Poulson scandals did much to force the House of Commons to initiate a Register of Members’ Interests. A subsequent Select Committee inquiry which reported in 1977 found that all three had indulged in “conduct inconsistent with the standards which the House is entitled to expect from its Members”. Cordle was forced to resign although the Commons then voted only to ‘take note’ of the Committee’s report rather than endorsing it. After serving periods in Armley Gaol , Wakefield and Oakham prisons, Poulson was released on 13 May 1977 from Lincoln Prison . His bankruptcy was discharged, with creditors receiving 10p in the pound, in 1980. A condition of the discharge was that half the proceeds of his autobiography would go to his creditors; the resulting book, The Price, gives his side of the corruption scandal and maintains his innocence.

Only a few copies of the book remain in circulation as it was withdrawn and pulped by the publishers through fear of libel actions. Throughout the rest of his life Poulson insisted that he was simply developing advanced public relations and consulting techniques. The trial at Leeds Crown Court lasted 52 days, and cost an estimated £1.25 million. Defending Poulson, QC Donald Herrod, said “He has nothing to live for and his abiding fear is that he will never complete his sentence because of ill health”. [4] However Donald Herrod later described his client as “hypocritical, self-righteous and perhaps something of a megalomaniac”. Contributions Among buildings designed by Poulson are the City House (1962) and International Pool (1965–1968), both in Leeds , and Forster House in Bradford , which was demolished in 2005 as part of the Forster Square redevelopment. In an indirect way, Poulson did make a contribution to the UK’s broadcasting culture.

A special edition of the investigative ITV series World in Action , The Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, became a cause célèbre in the debate about the power of Britain’s television regulators to interfere with broadcast journalism. The Poulson programme was banned by the then regulator, the ITA , even though its members had not seen it. A furious debate followed in which newspapers as varied as The Sunday Times and Socialist Worker united in calling for an end to such “censorship”. Granada Television , the makers of World in Action, broadcast a blank screen as a protest against the banning. There was some irony in this: the editor of World in Action was Raymond Fitzwalter who earlier, as deputy news editor of the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford, had led an investigation into Poulson’s activities, which the newspaper published. Eventually, after the film was shown to the ITA, it was transmitted on 30 April 1973, three months late, and under a different title, The Rise and Fall of John Poulson.

[5] The 1996 BBC television drama serial Our Friends in the North , written by Peter Flannery , contains a character, John Edwards (played by Geoffrey Hutchings ), who is closely based on Poulson. One of the reasons the production took so long to reach the screen—Flannery had originally written it for the stage in 1982—was the fear of the BBC that Poulson and others fictionalised in the drama might take legal action. In the event, the deaths of Poulson and T. Dan Smith in 1993 finally allowed the production to commence. [6] References john poulson : definition of john poulson and synonyms of john poulson (English) 10 References Family and early life Poulson came from a strict Methodist family and inherited a strong faith which stressed the importance of self-help. He did badly at school and at Leeds College of Art but nevertheless was articled to a Pontefract firm of architects, Garside and Pennington. He left to start his own Architecture practice with financial backing from his father. He never became a formally qualified architect, later claiming "I was too busy to complete my examinations".

Poulson soon began to cultivate contacts in the local borough council and officials at the larger West Riding county authority. Work soon began to arrive and Poulson told friends that he was "on his way". Poulson also became politically involved with the National Liberals , although never let political differences stop him from making friends who were in charge of commissioning public buildings. Post-war business Manasseh, Poulson's former residence Poulson obtained a medical exemption from wartime service in 1939. The same year he married Cynthia Sykes whose sister Lorna was married to Lord King of Wartnaby. He was thus well placed to expand his business throughout the wartime years. He was a workaholic and demanded the same commitment from his staff, dismissing staff who would not work his way. He had his own firm build him a house called 'Manasseh' at a cost of £60,000, helped by building contractors donating services for free in the hope of getting contracts in the future. The house won the 'Ideal Homes' House of the Year competition in 1958.

When Poulson's problems caught up with him in later life, he sold the house to a young couple for just over half the build cost. Poulson revolutionised the accepted architectural method of completing a design then handing it over for costing, planning and building. He developed a combined architecture and design practice, an all-in-one service which employed all the separate disciplines in integrated teams. This approach facilitated the development process and reduced costs. In the post-war years Poulson's business boomed and by the sixties was one of the largest in Europe at the time. He was later to admit that the practice expanded "beyond my wildest dreams" and offices were opened in London , Middlesbrough , Newcastle upon Tyne , Edinburgh , Beirut and Lagos . Local authorities Poulson's Leeds International Swimming Pool , opened in 1966 In 1958 the National Liberal MP Sir Herbert Butcher advised his friend Poulson to set up a servicing company to win business for his architect's practice. Poulson established Ropergate Services Ltd., named after the street in Pontefract where he was based. This company also had the advantage of reducing Poulson's tax liability considerably.

The late 1950s saw a building boom as Britain had finally shaken off post-war austerity and many local authorities embarked on major building schemes. Notable among them was Newcastle upon Tyne where dynamic leader T. Dan Smith wanted to set his mark on the city. Smith's desire to redevelop Newcastle attracted the attention of the construction firm Bovis which had worked for Poulson. Bovis' managing director suggested formalising links and in February 1962 Smith was appointed as a consultant to the Poulson organisation. This connection was extremely valuable to Poulson as Smith had a network of contacts among other authorities in the north-east, many of which were also recruited as Poulson consultants. Smith's involvement with the Labour Party reassured many Labour councillors wary of dealing with someone involved in the Conservative -allied National Liberals. Poulson also found a useful contact in Andrew Cunningham , a senior figure in both the General and Municipal Workers Union and the Labour Party in north east England . Some of Poulson's largest residential blocks were built in Cunningham's home town of Felling , County Durham . Cunningham would later go to jail for his dealings with the architect.

Nationalised industries Cannon Street station, a Poulson building City House (originally British Railways House) over Leeds City station was a Poulson building design built in 1962. Poulson was also in a good position to win work for the nationalised industries, partly due to his having offered gifts to many civil servants when they were relatively junior and calling upon them for a return of gratitude years in the future. As an example Poulson had met Graham Tunbridge, a railway employee, during the war. After the nationalisation of British Rail Tunbridge became estates surveyor for its Eastern Region and sent Poulson several contracts for modernisation of station-master's homes. When Tunbridge became Estates and Rating Surveyor for BR Southern Region, Poulson moved on to contracts at Waterloo station , Cannon Street station and East Croydon station . In return, Poulson had at first supplied Tunbridge with £25 weekly, and later loaned him a Rover car. Another productive contact was Scottish Office civil servant George Pottinger, who in the late 1950s was put in charge of a £3 million redevelopment of Aviemore as a winter sports complex.

Poulson gave Pottinger gifts worth over £30,000 over six years, and was appointed by Pottinger as architect in charge of the Aviemore project. Pottinger also had a degree of political knowledge and skill which Poulson lacked and drafted political speeches for the "architect". Poulson's connections with the National Liberals began to give him political advancement in the early 1960s. He was Vice-Chairman of the Executive Committee of the National Liberal Council from 1961 and frequently hosted National Liberal events in London at which he met senior government ministers, where Pottinger's speeches were impressive. He also made contact with the Labour MP Albert Roberts , for whom Poulson designed a house (free of charge). Roberts had useful contacts with the Portuguese government and was offered a consultancy by Poulson at £2,500 per annum. Overseas work Poulson was increasingly interested in obtaining commissions outside Britain in the mid-1960s. This required making more contacts.

The Conservative MP John Cordle had extensive contacts in West Africa and after helping on several small contracts, in 1965 became a consultant to Poulson at £1,000 per annum. However, Cordle's approaches to governments in Nigeria , The Gambia and Libya proved unfruitful. Cordle unwisely wrote a letter outlining everything he had done for Poulson, which was ultimately to doom his Parliamentary career. Maudling Another contact was the then Shadow Commonwealth Secretary Reginald Maudling , whom Poulson knew from his National Liberal activities. Maudling was anxious to build up a business career to keep up his income and Poulson needed a big name as Chairman of one of his companies, Construction Promotion. In 1966 Maudling accepted an offer to be Chairman for £5,000 per annum. In addition, Maudling's son Martin, who had left Oxford University without taking a degree, went to work for another Poulson company. Poulson agreed to donate large sums of money to a charity patronised by Maudling's wife.

In return, Maudling helped to bring pressure on the government of Malta to award a £1.5 million contract for the new Victoria Hospital on Gozo to Poulson. In Parliament, Maudling vociferously opposed the plans of the Labour government to reduce the amount of defence spending and number of UK troops on Malta. He traded on the goodwill this created to bring extra pressure, and also changed Conservative Party policy so that overseas development assistance to Malta would be 75% grant and 25% loan instead of the even split which the Labour government had introduced. Financial trouble Poulson's business model was initially highly successful and, at its apogee, was making an annual turnover of £1 million; he himself admitted to being a millionaire. However, it was consuming more contract work than was becoming available, and Poulson resorted to tackling these difficulties by bribing and corrupting local councillors, local authority officials and civil servants at all levels. This was an expensive strategy and Poulson later estimated that he "gave away" about £500,000 in the last few years of his involvement in the business.

As part of his attempts to get noticed, Poulson had become a local Commissioner of Taxes. However his own tax payments were seriously in deficit by the mid-1960s, mainly due to his extravagance on consultancies and gifts. In January 1968 the Inland Revenue finally decided to sue Poulson; on 18 November 1968 they obtained judgment in their favour for £211,639. Poulson struggled on, but in June 1969 his staff confronted him with the fact that he was approaching bankruptcy. He attempted to recoup cash he had poured into subsidiary companies, which alerted his consultants that all was not well. Maudling and his son quietly resigned in November 1969. On 31 December 1969 Poulson was formally removed from control of J.G.L. Poulson and Associates. On 9 November 1971 he filed his own bankruptcy petition revealing debts of £247,000. The bankruptcy hearings in Spring 1972 were assisted by Poulson's meticulous record-keeping which detailed his payments and gifts.

Poulson's generosity drew the comment from Muir Hunter QC during the bankruptcy proceedings that "[i]n fact, Mr Poulson, you were distributing largesse like Henry VIII ". The bankruptcy hearing also revealed Poulson's love for a lavish lifestyle and his penchant for rubbing shoulders with senior figures in the establishment. This desire to show his financial superiority over others only served to highlight his true character as a lonely, friendless and insecure person. Interestingly, one of Poulson's biggest creditors was the Inland Revenue to which he owed around £200,000. Whilst the Revenue were pressing Poulson for payment of this amount, he was himself presiding over debt hearings in Wakefield in his role as a Commissioner of Inland Revenue. It swiftly became apparent that Poulson was at the centre of a massive corruption scandal, and in July 1972, the Metropolitan Police began an investigation for fraud. This precipitated the resignation of Reginald Maudling, then Home Secretary and notionally in charge of the police. Dénouement On 22 June 1973 Poulson was arrested and charged with corruption in connection with the award of building contracts.

Following a 52-day trial at Leeds Crown Court which was widely reported in the press, he was convicted on 11 February 1974 of fraud and jailed for five years (later increased to seven years). Sentencing him, the judge called Poulson an "incalculably evil man". For his part, Poulson denied the charges, saying "I have been a fool, surrounded by a pack of leeches. I took on the world on its own terms, and no one can deny I once had it in my fist". Many of his contacts, notably T. Dan Smith and George Pottinger, were similarly convicted and jailed, though not the three MPs: it was found that there was a legal loophole through which Members of Parliament could not be considered as in charge of public funds. The Poulson scandals did much to force the House of Commons to initiate a Register of Members' Interests. A subsequent Select Committee inquiry which reported in 1977 found that all three had indulged in "conduct inconsistent with the standards which the House is entitled to expect from its Members".

Cordle was forced to resign although the Commons then voted only to 'take note' of the Committee's report rather than endorsing it. After serving periods in Armley Gaol , Wakefield and Oakham jails, Poulson was released on 13 May 1977 from Lincoln Prison . His bankruptcy was discharged, with creditors receiving 10p in the pound, in 1980. A condition of the discharge was that half the proceeds of his autobiography would go to his creditors; the resulting book, The Price, gives his side of the corruption scandal and maintains his innocence. Only a few copies of the book remain in circulation as it was withdrawn and pulped by the publishers through fear of libel actions. Throughout the rest of his life Poulson insisted that he was simply developing advanced public relations and consulting techniques. The trial at Leeds Crown Court lasted 52 days, and cost an estimated £1.25 million. Defending Poulson, QC Donald Herrod, said "He has nothing to live for and his abiding fear is that he will never complete his sentence because of ill health".

[2] However Donald Herrod later described his client as "hypocritical, self-righteous and perhaps something of a megalomaniac". Contribution Among buildings designed by Poulson are the City House (1962) and International Pool (1965–1968), both in Leeds , and Forster House, Bradford , which was demolished in 2005 as part of the Forster Square redevelopment. In an indirect way, Poulson did make a contribution to the UK's broadcasting culture. A special edition of the investigative ITV series World in Action , The Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, became a cause célèbre in the debate about the power of Britain's television regulators to interfere with broadcast journalism . The Poulson programme was banned by the then regulator, the ITA , even though its members had not seen it. A furious debate followed in which newspapers as varied as The Sunday Times and Socialist Worker united in calling for an end to such " censorship ". Granada Television , the makers of World In Action, broadcast a blank screen as a protest against the banning.

There was some irony in this: the editor of World in Action was Raymond Fitzwalter who earlier, as deputy news editor of the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford, had led an investigation into Poulson's activities, which the newspaper published. Eventually, after the film was shown to the ITA, it was transmitted on 30 April 1973, three months late, and under a different title, The Rise And Fall of John Poulson. [3] The 1996, BBC television drama serial Our Friends in the North , written by Peter Flannery , contains a character, John Edwards, who is closely based on Poulson, played by Geoffrey Hutchings . One of the reasons the production took so long to reach the screen – Flannery had originally written it for the stage in 1982 – was the fear of the BBC that Poulson and others fictionalised in the drama might take legal action. In the event, the deaths of Poulson and T. Dan Smith in 1993 finally allowed the production to commence. [4] References This article includes a list of references , but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations .

Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2010) 9780750929240: Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling - AbeBooks - Baston, Lewis: 0750929243 About this title Reginald Maudling, seen by the Observer in 1955 as 'a future Prime Minister', never fulfilled his early promise. In this, the first biography of Maudling, Lewis Baston presents a picture of a popular and respected politician, with a major influence on post-war Britain, whose career ended in scandal and ignominy. In the 1960s and 1970s Maudling occupied a succession of high offices and was twice a candidate for the Conservative leadership. He was also a political thinker whose ideas influenced Tory politics for thirty years. He helped liquidate the British Empire, he was the unions' favourite Tory Chancellor, a permissive Home Secretary and an outspoken opponent of Margaret Thatcher. His position now seems well to the left of New Labour. When Maudling failed to reach the top in 1965, the impact on him was devastating.

His personal and business life started to go wrong and he lost his ethical moorings. He formed a business partnership with corrupt architect John Poulson and sought riches in the Middle East. When Poulson's corruption was revealed in 1972, Maudling resigned as Home Secretary. In the years that followed Maudling was investigated by the Fraud Squad (who wanted him prosecuted), bankruptcy investigators, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Inland Revenue. The true scale of his involvement in the Poulson scandal is revealed here for the first time. With access to previously secret government and police files, and interviews with family, friends, colleagues and investigators, Lewis Baston is in a unique position to tell the full, tragic story of Maudling's rise and fall, and reveal the man behind the politician. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author: Lewis Baston has also written Sleaze:The State of the Nation (Channel 4 Books, 2000) and co-edited Politico's Guide to the General Election (Politico's Publishing, 2000, with Simon Henig), He collaborated with Anthony Seldon on his political biography of John Major (Weidenfeld, 1997), Lewis Baston is Senior Research Fellow at Kingston University's Centre for the understanding of Society and Politics. "About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

Question: Who resigned from the post of Home Secretary in 1972 because of his involvement with the architect John Poulson?
Answer: Reginald Maudling